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93 Taurus SHO Power Antenna problems
Hi,
About three months ago, my power antenna failed on my Ford Taurus SHO, I wanted to just replace the mast, but the mast on replacement factory Ford antennaes are not removeable. So, I took it to a local radio installer to have a new power antenna put in. He has been in business for about 15 years. They fitted my car with a Metra 44-PW22 power antenna. Everything was supposedly ok, but it wasn't. Driving home from the shop the same day, the antenna was going up and down on its own. I brought it back, the tech said he will take another look, he made an adjustment and said this is the way the antenna will only work in the car - basically telling me that when the car starts the antenna goes up (no matter whether the radio is on or off) and down when the car is turned off. I told him this is not acceptable.
His boss comes out and says your car needs a power trigger since your factory equipped radio is not supplying enough power to the antenna- he has to order it, its $20.00 and he will have it in two weeks. So I go ahead and order it. Now, this doesn;t make sense since the factory antenna has the same voltage/amp specs as the replacement.
Two weeks go by and I go to install the power trigger-a small box behind the radio. Everything worked like it should for a day. The antenna went down again and up on its own. So I brought it back and this time watched them. I noticed that they attached a wire from the antenna directly to the battery terminal (have no idea why), they said for grounding purposes - it doesn't look right. Do you know anyone with this?
Well after about 12 trips (over the course of 3 months, every weekend), to this installer, it still isn't right. It worked for two weeks after they solved a voltage issue and then it went down and now doesn't come back up.
What should I do? Should I just have them remove this antenna, refund my money on this and install a factory replacement antenna (which is $160.00 at ford) ? replace with a manual antenna? Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
TJ
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